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Passion, Purpose, and Practical Wisdom

The Re-Imagining Medicine Fellowship (ReMed) offers Duke pre-health students an interactive summer program exploring the intersection of medicine, virtue, and moral purpose.

About

What does it mean to be a good healthcare practitioner? How do we learn to care for people, not as containers of symptoms and illness, but as bearers of stories? How do we work for just, fair, humane, and equitable practices of health care? How do the arts, ethics, and history help us prepare to practice medicine with character and creativity, to develop a sense of meaning and purpose in our work, and to encourage and empower the communities whom we serve?

The Re-Imagining Medicine (ReMed) program is an interactive summer program for Duke pre-health students exploring the intersection of medicine, virtue, and moral purpose. Students are invited to imagine how those working in health-related fields can use their specialized knowledge and skills with humility to care for individuals, cure and prevent disease and suffering, flourish in their chosen profession, collaborate with other professionals, and work toward the greater good.

ReMed seeks to foster the character, imagination, and practices needed to work effectively in contexts of human suffering and healing. Fellows will join with healthcare professionals and faculty from a variety of disciplines to develop practices and skills that will help them to attend closely to their own stories, to the stories of the places where they live and work, and to the stories of the communities whom they plan to serve. ReMed engages the medical humanities, including ethics, spirituality, dance, visual arts, and expressive writing to help students explore themes often absent in traditional medical education.

ReMed is a program of The Purpose Project at Duke, the Kenan Institute for Ethics, and the Trent Center for Bioethics, Medical Humanities & History of Medicine. It is sponsored by a grant from The Duke Endowment.

Lynn McKinley Grant leads a Seeing through Art session with Duke undergraduate students as part of the ReMed course.

ReMed students with parachute

Program Format

The ReMed program has three primary components:

  • Immersive Week: The ReMed program begins the week following commencement with an on-campus immersive week at Duke in May. This immersive week will feature shared meals and conversation, experiential learning at Duke Hospital and Duke Regional Hospital, engagement with creative writing and the visual arts, introduction to the medical humanities, and facilitated reflections on justice and equity in health care.
  • Weekly Virtual Sessions: Following this week, ReMed will meet virtually for eight weeks. Fellows and faculty will gather for weekly 90-minute ReMed Seminars online to reflect on their summer experiences and to engage in conversation with leading scholars and practitioners in the medical humanities. Readings, writing exercises, and reflective practices will be assigned between seminars. These seminars will take place on Zoom from 4:30 pm–6:00 pm ET on Thursdays.
  • Experiential Work/Service: ReMed is not a stand-alone program. To enable critical reflection on lived experiences and practices, Fellows are required to pair their participation in ReMed with an internship, employment, or service work related to health or health care over the summer. Fellows must arrange this parallel experience on their own. Practicum experiences must be at least twenty hours a week for eight weeks over the summer, and may include, but are not limited to:
    • Formal Duke civic engagement or research programs, with permission from the directors of those programs
    • Volunteer service in a health-related setting
    • Paid employment in a hospital, clinic, public health agency, or health-related company or nonprofit
    • Engagement in clinical research
  • Fall ReMed Dinner Gathering to reflect on and celebrate the summer ReMed cohort and student accomplishments.

ReMed Fellows are expected to participate fully in all components of the fellowship, including the entire immersive week, and to miss no more than one virtual Seminar.

2019 fellows at hospital

Reimagine Medicine mindfulness

Award

For full participation in the Fellowship, Fellows will receive:

  • Housing at The Lodge Hotel, located near the Duke School of Medicine (RAs and others with prior housing arrangements may opt out of the provided housing option), during the immersive week
  • Meals throughout the immersive week
  • $1000 honorarium

Apply

If you are a current first-, second-, or third-year Duke undergraduate planning on working in health care interested in exploring questions of medicine, virtue, and moral purposeReimagining Medicine (ReMed) invites you to apply for a Summer 2024 Fellowship today. The Reimagining Medicine Fellowship is limited to 20 students. The priority application deadline is January 31, 2024. After that time, applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until available spots are filled.

Call for Applications

2023 ReMed Fellows

2021 ReMed Fellows

Past ReMed Fellows

2020

2019 ReMed group photo
2019
2018 ReMed group photo
2018

Contact Information

Warren Kinghorn
Esther Colliflower Associate Research Professor of Pastoral and Moral Theology
Co-Director, Theology, Medicine, and Culture Initiative
Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Duke University Medical Center
warren.kinghorn@duke.edu

Victoria Yunez Behm, MS, MTS, CNS
ReMed Program Coordinator
victoria.behm@duke.edu